I start off the lesson by pulling out exemplary student work (can be anything you have for the week) and praising student effort, scores, writing, etc. We all clap for them.

I then ask these students to stand and share how they felt when others gave them credit for their efforts? Students respond and then I have them sit down.

I tell students that there are other authors who all students need to recognize as well - the people who wrote the websites and books they used to find information about their report topics.

Objective : I share it is important to recognize these authors and it tells others they appreciate their writing. This is called a bibliography and today you will be writing bibliographies of the websites and books you used for your reports.

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Resources

I review text features to show where to look for information in a book. You can ask leading questions here such as "where would I find a copyright date? What is the job of a publisher? Where would I find this company? How do I write the title of a book? magazine? article?, etc. to identify areas of misunderstanding or lower understanding (I write these areas on the board for later reference)

I ask students: What an encyclopedia is? (you would be surprised how many don't know about this book or website?) Where we can find an encyclopedia online? (Wikipedia should be mentioned or any other encyclopedia)

I review the encyclopedia bibliography form with students and then I have students to share an internet site they used. I ask: Why do people post information on the internet? Why do people use the internet for research?

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Students receive their worksheets and research the websites and the books they used for their reports to complete each form with at least one example. They can reference their examples of bibliographies entries worksheet to help with formatting.

Even with this form I had some students who really struggled not so much with identifying the information, but with placing the punctuation in the correct place. Definitely a problem I had not anticipated. The only other difficulty was identifying information from webpages. many of these do not have an author and their titles are actually the names of the webpages. I showed them how to scroll down to the bottom of pages to identify the information links found there.

Early finishers completed a second form for the reference sources with a second book, webpage and/or encyclopedia used for their research. I would have liked all students to complete this but there were more questions that anticipated and the time did not allow. Others became peer tutors for those who were struggling with different areas. The reference chart really helped them in both areas.

I circulate the room to check for errors and and to assist where needed.

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I gather students together and ask "Why is it important to recognize books and websites used when writing a report?"

"How is not citing a bibliography similar to plagiarism? Should it be illegal? Why or Why not?" I read the passage from a legal website stating that students have been expelled from college (there's other information on this website as well if you want to emphasize a different point.)

I ask them "How would you feel if someone turned in a paper that received an "4" and were praised for it, but you knew they copied it? What if the person they copied from was you?" We share out how wrong this would make them feel and I restate that this is why it is so important for us to identify the resources we use in our bibliographies.

Then I close by sharing that they will now get the opportunity to share what they know by completing an assessment as their exit ticket to determine their levels of understanding of bibliographies.

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Big Idea:
In this lesson, the class researches invertebrate animal phylums by viewing a Powerpoint Presentation, pictures, and a video of animals in each phylum. Then, students summarize their learning by writing a paragraph about the many types of invertebrates.